© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

World War 1

Read more about the article The riddle of the Ku-ring-gai Sphinx

The riddle of the Ku-ring-gai Sphinx

One of the strangest memorials to the fallen of The Great War in Australia is the peculiar sculpture of the Sphinx, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The sculpture, a one-eighth replica of the famous Egyptian monument, is flanked by two small carved pyramids and forms part of a wider memorial walk in the national park. Stonemason and former WWI digger, William Shirley. The Ku-ring-gai Sphinx was created by a dying Great War digger, William Shirley, who served in the AIF's 13th Battalion. Shirley was relatively elderly (40 years old) and had perhaps been unknowingly sick with…

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Read more about the article Passchendaele: a name written in blood

Passchendaele: a name written in blood

If getting killed by the thousands is glorious, it was glorious in the Ypres battle. My battalion came out 200 strong out of a thousand. It breaks my heart when I think of it.Private Bob Gibson, Knorrit Flat By 1917, as fighting wore on in Europe, the British high command was practically in disrepute among sizeable portions of the Allied armies. Commander in Chief Douglas Haig didn’t go anywhere near the Ypres battlefields in late 1917 and criticised the troops for not being able to make and hold territorial gains. Men saw that they were repeatedly…

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Read more about the article Uncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.
At the grave of Jack Allsopp in France, 2015.

Uncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Passchendaele was a word I grew up with because that was where my grandmother's favourite brother died. My grandmother's been gone from this world herself now for more than 50 years, but I can see her plainly in my mind's eye, sitting in her rocking chair in her little fibro housing commission cottage at Glendale, Newcastle, NSW. She didn't talk much to adults about Uncle Jack; maybe because she got more than a bit misty when she thought about him. But she told me, when I was a child at her knee, and she let me…

Continue ReadingUncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.
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